Four Centuries of Great Music August 23, 2026 Migration and Immigration

Four Centuries of Great Music        Migration and Immigration Complete

Tonight on Four Centuries of Great Music is an episode inspired by a program by Nicholas Phan, tenor at Tanglewood this year called “Fellow Citizen”.  This program focused on the ideas of what is “home”, what does it mean to leave home, and what does it mean to have to find a new home in terms of Migration and Immigration.  As a tenor, all of the music were songs during Phan performance.  I will start there but expand upon that with orchestral works.  

Let me start as Nicholas Phan did with Franz Schubert’s Der Wanderer with the lyrics taken from the poem by Georg Lübeck

The Wanderer 
English translation © Richard Wigmore

I come from the mountains;
the valley steams, the ocean roars. 
I wander, silent and joyless,
and my sighs for ever ask: Where?

Here the sun seems so cold,
the blossom faded, life old,
and men’s words mere hollow noise; 
I am a stranger everywhere.

Where are you, my beloved land? 
Sought, dreamt of, yet never known! 
The land so green with hope,
the land where my roses bloom,

Where my friends walk,
where my dead ones rise again, 
the land that speaks my tongue, 
O land, where are you?

I wander, silent and joyless,
and my sighs for ever ask: Where?
In a ghostly whisper the answer comes: 
‘There, where you are not, is happiness!’

Here is a performance of Franz Schubert’s Der Wanderer by Robert Holl, bass-baritone & David Lutz, piano from the album Schubert: Ausgewählte Lieder Prieser Records


And Franz  Schubert loved the main theme from this song so much he created his  Fantasie in C Major “The Wanderer Fantasy” for piano.  And Franz Liszt loved it so much that he created an orchestral and piano version of Schubert’s Fantasie in C Major The Wanderer Fantasy.

Franz Liszt:  Schubert’s Fantasie in C Major, S. 366 - I. Allegro con fuoco ma non troppo
Franz Liszt:  Schubert’s Fantasie in C Major, S. 366 - II. Adagio
Franz Liszt:  Schubert's Fantasie in C Major, S. 366 - III. Presto
Franz Liszt:  Schubert's Fantasie in C Major, S. 366 - IV. Allegro
Lukas Geniušas, piano; Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen, Modestas Pitrėnas, conductor
Schubert/Liszt: Wanderer Fantasy - Tchaikovsky: Concert Fantasy
Alpha Classics
 
Today on Four Centuries of Great Music, I am exploring Migration and Immigration in music and again this episode is based upon the program by Nicholas Phan, tenor at Tanglewood this year called “Fellow Citizen”.
We will close this first hour of this episode with Nico Muhly: Stranger

Nico Muhly writes: For my piece Stranger, I’ve chosen four texts: an academic introduction to a project about the history of Chinese railroad workers; an interview with Rosa Breci, a Sicilian woman who arrived at Ellis Island in 1911; an extraordinary letter from a Chinese-American about the racism he experienced and how it was legally codified and reinforced; and finally, a letter from a woman to her husband, serving in the U.S. Army in 1945.

These texts are not meant to address some generic sense of the American immigrant experience, but rather serve as an attempt to navigate different kinds of shared American stories, from the confrontational (forced assimilation) to the practical (eye exams at the border), and make the connection between oppressive 19th-century immigration policies and those being advocated in the U.S. even now.

When the tenor sings the line “How do we as scholars give voice to the voiceless?” is he the scholar or the voiceless? When he sings “I ask you, where is your golden rule, your Christian charity, and the fruits of your Bible teachings, when you talk about doing unto others as you would have them do to you?” is he the author or the reader of the Chinese immigrant's letter? Are we, as the audience, meant to hear this sentence in the current political climate, or are we to imagine ourselves back in 1879?

Setting text to music has its own problems and complexities, wherein we hear the words simply, but we learn something new in the carrying-over from the singer to the audience.
NICO MUHLY

Nico Muhly: Stranger: I. Fragments of the Past
Nico Muhly: Stranger: II. Ellis Island
Nico Muhly: Stranger: III. All Men
Nico Muhly: Stranger: IV. Leviticus 19:34
Nico Muhly: Stranger: V. Threats & Intimidations
Nico Muhly: Stranger: VI. Everyone Cries
Nico Muhly: Stranger: VII. My Love

Nicholas Phan & Brooklyn Rider
Stranger - Works for Tenor by Nico Muhly
AVIE Records 

Migration is also a central theme of Derek Bermel’s A Shout, a Whisper, and a Trace, a three-movement orchestral work that reflects on Bela Bartók’s move from his native Hungary to New York City after the outbreak of World War II. The piece was an opportunity for Bermel to consider his hometown with fresh eyes.
“I had just picked up a copy of Bartók’s letters in a used bookstore,” said Bermel. “I was fascinated, especially by the section with the letters he wrote home from New York. Bartók’s letters were full of this longing.”

Bartók found life in New York rather difficult. He and his wife lived on money from his research fellowship at Columbia University, in which he transcribed Serbo-Croatian folksongs for cataloging and publication. He struggled with traffic and the subway system. Though he produced a handful of major works — including the Concerto for Orchestra — he gave few piano performances and the effects of leukemia began to take their toll (he died of complications of the disease in 1945). 

Accordingly, the first movement of Bermel’s score explores a clash of cultures. “Some of the harmonies don't match the rhythms,” said Bermel. “The harmonies are a little more New York while the rhythms are a little more Eastern Europe.” 
After a second movement inspired by Bartók’s “night music” sounds, the finale imagines him as a ghost-like figure, haunting the city streets. “I thought of his ghost and then I thought of all the ghosts of people who lived here before. So that was kind of my way into a New York piece.”

Derek Bermel:  A Shout, a Whisper, and a Trace
Albany Symphony conducted by David Alan Miller
Migrations
Naxos Recordings
 
I. amerikanizálódik       Americanization    
II. az ejszaka zeneje     The Music of the Night
III. ‘vég’        end

We will lose with Peter Boyer’s Ellis Island:  The Dream of America as performed by Peter Boyer conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra from the album Ellis Island:  The Dream of America  Naxos Recordings